"Barely living "zombie" bacteria and other forms of life constitute an immense amount of carbon deep within Earth's subsurface—245 to 385 times greater than the carbon mass of all humans on the surface, according to scientists nearing the end of a 10-year international collaboration to reveal Earth's innermost secrets.

***

"With insights from now hundreds of sites under the continents and seas, they have approximated the size of the deep biosphere—2 to 2.3 billion cubic km (almost twice the volume of all oceans) - as well as the carbon mass of deep life: 15 to 23 billion tonnes (an average of at least 7.5 tonnes of carbon per cu km subsurface).

***

"Among many key discoveries and insights:
The deep biosphere constitutes a world that can be viewed as a sort of "subterranean Galapagos" and includes members of all three domains of life: bacteria and archaea (microbes with no membrane-bound nucleus), and eukarya (microbes or multicellular organisms with cells that contain a nucleus as well as membrane-bound organelles)

"Two types of microbes—bacteria and archaea—dominate Deep Earth. Among them are millions of distinct types, most yet to be discovered or characterized. This so-called microbial "dark matter" dramatically expands our perspective on the tree of life. Deep Life scientists say about 70% of Earth's bacteria and archaea live in the subsurface

"Deep microbes are often very different from their surface cousins, with life cycles on near-geologic timescales, dining in some cases on nothing more than energy from rocks
The genetic diversity of life below the surface is comparable to or exceeds that above the surface

"Microbial community richness relates to the age of marine sediments where cells are found—suggesting that in older sediments, food energy has declined over time, reducing the microbial community

"The absolute limits of life on Earth in terms of temperature, pressure, and energy availability have yet to be found. The records continually get broken.

***

"Led by Cara Magnabosco of the Flatiron Institute Center for Computational Biology, New York, and an international team of researchers, subsurface scientists factored in a suite of considerations, including global heat flow, surface temperature, depth and lithology—the physical characteristics of rocks in each location—to estimate that the continental subsurface hosts 2 to 6 × 10^29 cells.

"Combined with estimates of subsurface life under the oceans, total global Deep Earth biomass is approximately 15 to 23 petagrams (15 to 23 billion tonnes) of carbon.

***

"Molecular studies raise the likelihood that microbial dark matter is much more diverse than what we currently know it to be, and the deepest branching lineages challenge the three-domain concept introduced by Carl Woese in 1977. Perhaps we are approaching a nexus where the earliest possible branching patterns might be accessible through deep life investigation.

"Ten years ago, we knew far less about the physiologies of the bacteria and microbes that dominate the subsurface biosphere," says Karen Lloyd, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, USA. "Today, we know that, in many places, they invest most of their energy to simply maintaining their existence and little into growth, which is a fascinating way to live.

"Today too, we know that subsurface life is common. Ten years ago, we had sampled only a few sites—the kinds of places we'd expect to find life. Now, thanks to ultra-deep sampling, we know we can find them pretty much everywhere, albeit the sampling has obviously reached only an infinitesimally tiny part of the deep biosphere."

Comment: First it is obvious the Earth allows life everywhere and it is amazingly life-friendly. The next question is how did those organisms get down there? Did they first evolve on the surface and then slowly go deeper? If they suddenly went that deep they could not have evolved to the forms they are now, which are markedly different from surface bacteria. Were they designed to be there? That could be God at work running the evolutionary process.

DAVID: Of course a Darwin-based article will present your line of reasoning, which always avoids the need for design engineering.

dhw: Sorry, but “Darwin-based” is no defence of hypothesis 1). My line of reasoning never avoids the need for “design engineering”. Its theistic version simply offers the possibility that your God gave cells/cell communities the ability to do their own designing – not in anticipation of changing conditions but in response to them.

DAVID: Why you constantly think God would give up control of one of His projects puzzles me. We can make up anything about God we want, but our only clues about God's thoughts are the results of His works, and then working backwards in our reasoning. I certainly don't reason like you do.

dhw; You tell me I always avoid the need for design engineering, I explain that I never ignore it, and so you switch back to the question of control, which has already been dealt with umpteen times! Ah well, round we go. Yes indeed, we work backwards from the results, which are millions and millions of life forms, econiches etc. etc. extant and extinct. You reason that your God’s motive for this diversity was to provide food to keep life going. And you then reason that his sole purpose for doing so was to produce H. sapiens, so that we would think about him and he could have a relationship with us, although he is always in full control and you simply don’t know why he chose this roundabout method of achieving his sole purpose. Why would he want to give up control? Perhaps because – as you have often said – he is hidden but watches us with interest, and it is more interesting to watch the unpredictable than to watch everything do precisely what you have prearranged for it to do. (But he can still dabble if he wants to.) This reading of God’s mind is an alternative to your own, as described above, and – to anticipate the next leap backwards – is no more “humanizing” than your own.

He arranged for us to have free will. That gives Him plenty to watch if He wants to watch. I don't know if He wants to watch. Why should I know why He chose evolution as His methodology?
I can only take reasons from what I see. You want to know more than we can know.

]]>https://agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=30612
https://agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=30612Sat, 08 Dec 2018 21:57:42 +0000EvolutionDavid TurellEvolution: whale teeth and baleens; another article (reply)DAVID: This discussion suggests that baleens came from hair follicle genes. How did they get to work from within the jaw?

dhw: And this discussion also suggests that the whole process took place in response to environmental change, as opposed to your theory that your God preprogrammes or dabbles change in advance of environmental change. Two hypotheses for you: 1) your God took away the teeth of pre-baleen whales, told them to go away and suction feed, and then a few million years later dabbled with all of them to insert baleens, because all this was essential to keep life going until he could produce humans; 2) pre-baleen whales took to suction feeding in response to the changing ocean environment and so they didn’t need their teeth, which then disappeared, and a few million years later the cell communities used their (possibly God-given) intelligence to adapt existing structures to improve the whale’s method of feeding.

DAVID: Of course a Darwin-based article will present your line of reasoning, which always avoids the need for design engineering.

dhw: Sorry, but “Darwin-based” is no defence of hypothesis 1). My line of reasoning never avoids the need for “design engineering”. Its theistic version simply offers the possibility that your God gave cells/cell communities the ability to do their own designing – not in anticipation of changing conditions but in response to them.

DAVID: Why you constantly think God would give up control of one of His projects puzzles me. We can make up anything about God we want, but our only clues about God's thoughts are the results of His works, and then working backwards in our reasoning. I certainly don't reason like you do.

You tell me I always avoid the need for design engineering, I explain that I never ignore it, and so you switch back to the question of control, which has already been dealt with umpteen times! Ah well, round we go. Yes indeed, we work backwards from the results, which are millions and millions of life forms, econiches etc. etc. extant and extinct. You reason that your God’s motive for this diversity was to provide food to keep life going. And you then reason that his sole purpose for doing so was to produce H. sapiens, so that we would think about him and he could have a relationship with us, although he is always in full control and you simply don’t know why he chose this roundabout method of achieving his sole purpose. Why would he want to give up control? Perhaps because – as you have often said – he is hidden but watches us with interest, and it is more interesting to watch the unpredictable than to watch everything do precisely what you have prearranged for it to do. (But he can still dabble if he wants to.) This reading of God’s mind is an alternative to your own, as described above, and – to anticipate the next leap backwards – is no more “humanizing” than your own.

DAVID: This discussion suggests that baleens came from hair follicle genes. How did they get to work from within the jaw?

dhw: And this discussion also suggests that the whole process took place in response to environmental change, as opposed to your theory that your God preprogrammes or dabbles change in advance of environmental change. Two hypotheses for you: 1) your God took away the teeth of pre-baleen whales, told them to go away and suction feed, and then a few million years later dabbled with all of them to insert baleens, because all this was essential to keep life going until he could produce humans; 2) pre-baleen whales took to suction feeding in response to the changing ocean environment and so they didn’t need their teeth, which then disappeared, and a few million years later the cell communities used their (possibly God-given) intelligence to adapt existing structures to improve the whale’s method of feeding.

DAVID: Of course a Darwin-based article will present your line of reasoning, which always avoids the need for design engineering.

dhw: Sorry, but “Darwin-based” is no defence of hypothesis 1). My line of reasoning never avoids the need for “design engineering”. Its theistic version simply offers the possibility that your God gave cells/cell communities the ability to do their own designing – not in anticipation of changing conditions but in response to them.

Why you constantly think God would give up control of one of His projects puzzles me. We can make up anything about God we want, but our only clues about God's thoughts are the results of His works, and then working backwards in our reasoning. I certainly don't reason like you do.

]]>https://agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=30601
https://agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=30601Fri, 07 Dec 2018 18:13:11 +0000EvolutionDavid TurellEvolution: whale teeth and baleens; another article (reply)DAVID: This discussion suggests that baleens came from hair follicle genes. How did they get to work from within the jaw?

dhw: And this discussion also suggests that the whole process took place in response to environmental change, as opposed to your theory that your God preprogrammes or dabbles change in advance of environmental change. Two hypotheses for you: 1) your God took away the teeth of pre-baleen whales, told them to go away and suction feed, and then a few million years later dabbled with all of them to insert baleens, because all this was essential to keep life going until he could produce humans; 2) pre-baleen whales took to suction feeding in response to the changing ocean environment and so they didn’t need their teeth, which then disappeared, and a few million years later the cell communities used their (possibly God-given) intelligence to adapt existing structures to improve the whale’s method of feeding.

DAVID: Of course a Darwin-based article will present your line of reasoning, which always avoids the need for design engineering.

Sorry, but “Darwin-based” is no defence of hypothesis 1). My line of reasoning never avoids the need for “design engineering”. Its theistic version simply offers the possibility that your God gave cells/cell communities the ability to do their own designing – not in anticipation of changing conditions but in response to them.

QUOTE: “So sometime around 30 million years ago, when a changing ocean environment probably led to a surge in planktonic organisms, whales picked up a new technique — swimming through a mass of many millions of small critters.”The newly discovered prehistoric whale Maiabalaena nesbittae, which lived about 33 million years ago, didn’t have teeth or baleen. To Pyenson, this suggests that the ancestors of today’s baleen whales totally gave up on teeth in favor of suction feeding, setting the stage for the rise of baleen a few million years later."

DAVID: All by Darwin magic, of course. what happened takes a lot of planning and design. This discussion suggests that baleens came from hair follicle genes. How did they get to work from within the jaw?

dhw: And this discussion also suggests that the whole process took place in response to environmental change, as opposed to your theory that your God preprogrammes or dabbles change in advance of environmental change. Two hypotheses for you: 1) your God took away the teeth of pre-baleen whales, told them to go away and suction feed, and then a few million years later dabbled with all of them to insert baleens, because all this was essential to keep life going until he could produce humans; 2) pre-baleen whales took to suction feeding in response to the changing ocean environment and so they didn’t need their teeth, which then disappeared, and a few million years later the cell communities used their (possibly God-given) intelligence to adapt existing structures to improve the whale’s method of feeding.

Of course a Darwin-based article will present your line of reasoning, which always avoids the need for design engineering.

]]>https://agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=30588
https://agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=30588Thu, 06 Dec 2018 18:26:02 +0000EvolutionDavid TurellEvolution: whale teeth and baleens; another article (reply)QUOTE: “So sometime around 30 million years ago, when a changing ocean environment probably led to a surge in planktonic organisms, whales picked up a new technique — swimming through a mass of many millions of small critters.”The newly discovered prehistoric whale Maiabalaena nesbittae, which lived about 33 million years ago, didn’t have teeth or baleen. To Pyenson, this suggests that the ancestors of today’s baleen whales totally gave up on teeth in favor of suction feeding, setting the stage for the rise of baleen a few million years later."

DAVID: All by Darwin magic, of course. what happened takes a lot of planning and design. This discussion suggests that baleens came from hair follicle genes. How did they get to work from within the jaw?

And this discussion also suggests that the whole process took place in response to environmental change, as opposed to your theory that your God preprogrammes or dabbles change in advance of environmental change. Two hypotheses for you: 1) your God took away the teeth of pre-baleen whales, told them to go away and suction feed, and then a few million years later dabbled with all of them to insert baleens, because all this was essential to keep life going until he could produce humans; 2) pre-baleen whales took to suction feeding in response to the changing ocean environment and so they didn’t need their teeth, which then disappeared, and a few million years later the cell communities used their (possibly God-given) intelligence to adapt existing structures to improve the whale’s method of feeding.

"No creature on Earth is as successful an eater as the baleen whale. By swimming through clouds of krill with their mouths open wide, then sorting food from water by filtering it through a curtain of bony bristles, these cetaceans have grown bigger than any animal in the history of the planet. The largest dinosaur would have been dwarfed by the average 300,000-pound blue whale. Massive woolly mammoths would have swooned to see rorquals swallow half a million calories in a single mouthful.

***

"The first whales had jaws full of teeth, like their four-legged ancestors that abandoned the land for the ocean about 50 million years ago. But chewing, at least the way we do it, is not an effective strategy for dining at sea.

“'The rules of engagement are totally different underwater,” Pyenson told me. Whales “can’t use claws to subdue prey. . . . They don’t have opposable thumbs.” Imagine trying to munch on a meal you couldn’t even hold.

"For that reason, most of today’s whales that have teeth, such as dolphins and beluga, are suction feeders. They use their pearly whites to grab onto prey, then take advantage of the temporary pressure differential created when they open their mouths to slurp the food down their gullets.

"But this strategy entails spending a lot of time chasing single large prey, Pyenson said. So sometime around 30 million years ago, when a changing ocean environment probably led to a surge in planktonic organisms, whales picked up a new technique — swimming through a mass of many millions of small critters.

"This “lunge feeding” technique is the “largest biomechanical event on the planet,” Pyenson said. And it’s a genius way to eat. “It’s got a huge return on investment.”

"Baleen is essential to this strategy. But the origins of this structure — which is made from keratin, like hair and nails, rather than dentin and enamel, like teeth — have long been a mystery. Did early whales have both baleen and teeth? How long were they munchers before they became gulpers?

"In a new study in the journal Current Biology, Pyenson and his colleague, Carlos Mauricio Peredo, offer a clue: The newly discovered prehistoric whale Maiabalaena nesbittae, which lived about 33 million years ago, didn’t have teeth or baleen. To Pyenson, this suggests that the ancestors of today’s baleen whales totally gave up on teeth in favor of suction feeding, setting the stage for the rise of baleen a few million years later."

Comment: All by Darwin magic, of course. what happened takes a lot of planning and design.This discussion suggests that baleens came from hair follicle genes. How did they get to work from within the jaw?

Whales were once all toothed predators. Around 36 million years ago, a group of them evolved to lose their teeth. We don’t know what drove that evolutionary trend, but it ultimately gave rise to today’s filter-feeding whales, including blue whales and humpback whales, that use baleen bristles in their mouths to remove tiny prey from the water.

Scientists haven’t been able to precisely reconstruct what happened during whales’ transition from teeth-bearing to filter-feeding – but they had assumed that the filter-feeding system emerged before the whales lost all their teeth.

***

Using CT scans, the team found the extinct whale (Maiabalae nanesbittae) had no alveoli – teeth sockets. It also had a different mouth structure than baleen-bearing whales, meaning it had no ability to filter-feed either.

“[The whale] represents a surprising intermediate stage between modern filter-feeding whales and their toothed ancestors,” Peredo says. “Our study makes it very unlikely that teeth and baleen existed at the same time in the same animals.”

Peredo suggests baleen might have appeared 23 million years ago, about 10 million years after whales lost their teeth.

But how did M. nanesbittae capture prey? Peredo says this whale was probably a suction-feeder like modern salmon and trout. The whale has an enlarged bone in the back of its mouth, resembling those observed in suction-feeding fish. Such bones help the mouth muscles generate a strong sucking force.

The transformation from a biter to a suction-feeder then into a filter-feeder also tells us about when whale diets changed. Sucking and biting are techniques that work best when the animal aims to take one target at a time, whereas filter-feeding targets bulk quantity of tiny organisms.

“There’s a good chance that [filter-feeding] is more energetically efficient,” Peredo says. “It seems to be a successful body plan for marine mammals.”

Comment: When a mammal enters a new environment to live the changes have to be very complex and enormous. Just hopping into the water doesn't work. Losing teeth and gaining a filter system isn't done stepwise. It has to be designed.

]]>https://agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=30516
https://agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=30516Thu, 29 Nov 2018 22:54:19 +0000EvolutionDavid TurellEvolution: microbiome of coral (reply)Bacteria and other organisms are everywhere and obviously play a role in evolution as microbiomes:

"Corals and the microbes they host evolved together, new research by Oregon State University shows.

***

"Modern corals are home to a complex composition of dinoflagellates, fungi, bacteria and archaea that together make up the coral microbiome. Shifts in microbiome composition are connected to changes in coral health.

"'Likely the ancestral corals also harbored complex microbial communities but there's a lot we don't know about how these coral-microbe symbioses evolved or the key factors influencing microbial communities in modern corals," Vega Thurber said. "Certain species of corals have distinct microbiomes, to the point where that occurred at some point in their evolutionary history. Not 400 million years ago, but there are specific groups of microbes that do show very strong evidence of evolving with their hosts more recently."

***

"On a lot of different scales, the more similar the coral hosts, the more similar the microbial communities are—both the whole community and particular microbes," McMinds said. "We collected samples from as many kinds of corals as was possible. For every sample set, we looked at the corals' tissue, skeleton and mucus to see what microbes were there."

"To do that, the researchers sequenced the 16S rRNA gene. The gene is present in every living organism, McMinds explains, but is slightly different. He likened it to a "molecular bar code" of each organism it belongs to.

"From there, the scientists could look for patterns between different corals' microbial communities and determine whether co-evolution of the corals and their microbiomes had taken place.

"'We found strong support for coral-microbe 'phylosymbiosis,' in which coral microbiome composition and richness is reflected in coral host's evolutionary history," Vega Thurber said. "When speciation for modern reef-building coral families began between roughly 25 million and 65 years ago, that was accompanied by large changes in microbiome richness. And changes continued to accumulate during more recent speciation events."

***

"It was something of a surprise to researchers to find that the microbial communities of the corals' calcium carbonate skeletons showed greater microbiome richness compared to the tissue and mucus microbiomes. Also, the skeletal microbiomes displayed the strongest signal of long-term phylosymbiosis—a pattern in which the diversification of a related group of host organisms correlates with changes in dissimilarities among their microbiomes.

"'We originally thought corals would show signs of phylosymbiosis throughout their entire phylogenetic history, and the results support that for the skeleton and tissue but not the mucus," McMinds said. "Despite variability in the chemical composition of mucus between species and significant host-specificity in the mucus microbiome, host specificity was limited to relatively recent divergences.'"

Comment: This line of research is just beginning, but there is no question that life
may have started with bacteria, but they have remained active to influence evolution over time in the multicellular forms that followed them..

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https://agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=30469Sat, 24 Nov 2018 19:20:04 +0000EvolutionDavid TurellEvolution: the newly-found bacterial role: (reply)Bacteria play a role in every activity in the body, as the microbiome is studied and the influences the bacteria create is recognized:

“'We’ve underestimated the potential contribution of microbes to traits we’ve been studying for decades or centuries,” said Kevin Theis, a microbiologist at Wayne State University who studies the paste-making microbes of the hyena. “If the genes for these important traits are actually in the microbiome and not the animal itself, then we need to take a systems-level approach and look at the host-microbe system as a whole.”

"Look closely enough at any plant or animal and you will discover a riot of bacteria, fungi and viruses forming a complex and interconnected ecosystem. A recent explosion of research reveals how deeply we rely on our microbial patterns to keep our bodies functioning, raising profound questions about what it means to be an individual.

***

"Some biologists are calling for a radical upgrade of evolutionary theory, arguing that prevailing ideas, developed from the study of bigger, more easily understood organisms, don’t fit nicely into this new world. Others contend that existing theory just needs to be applied more carefully. All agree that the micro and macro worlds are inescapably interdependent, and that biologists must explore the frontier of their interconnections.

***

"Holobionts and hologenomes are “incontrovertible realities of nature,” wrote Theis and his colleagues in the journal mSystems. Hologenomes contain vastly more genes than the host genome alone, and since at least a fraction of the microbial genes have significant bearing on the survival and reproduction of the host, we need to consider the hologenome as a possible unit of selection if we want to understand the evolution of the holobiont.

***

"Proponents of this hologenomic concept of evolution argue that if there is a fidelity across generations between hosts and microbes, then the holobiont embodies a coming together of numerous, disparate evolutionary lineages into a singular being, a coalition of many that contributes to the functional integrity of the whole. Only when considering the holobiont as a single entity capable of being shaped as a unit by natural selection can we make sense of its complexities.

***

"Typically, human babies not born by cesarean section acquire their mother’s vaginal microbes en route to the outside world. Mom’s microbes also rub off on a baby through close contact and breastfeeding. Although eventually the microbial community changes as the child moves more freely through the world, these early microbes play an outsize role in immune system development.

***

"Strassmann argues that focusing solely on what’s happening in the holobiont misses much of the microbes’ story. Many host-associated microbes spend significant chunks of their lives outside their host, in an environment where they’re subject to very different selection pressures. The holobiont idea, she says, puts blinders on our understanding of the evolution of these microbes, focusing attention on the host environment and neglecting other habitats that could shape a microbe’s character.

"Critics of holobiont-centered theories are not discounting the importance of studying the interconnections between microbes and hosts, but they think the holobiont framework is almost always misleading. They envision the holobiont as an ecological community, not an evolutionary individual. The knowledge that symbiotic relationships with microbes are important “doesn’t mean we have to completely forget what we know about how evolution and natural selection operate,” Strassmann said."

Comment: the article continues with debate about the meaning of this approach as if offers a new avenue to thinking about evolution. What occurs to me is we can see a new role for bacteria which have persisted since the beginning of life and perhaps this is the reason why they have remained so active in the process of evolving. They take new roles to play at all stages. They create immediate adaptations, for example, in digestion, but it is certainly obvious they do not design giant changes.

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https://agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=30457Fri, 23 Nov 2018 20:22:07 +0000EvolutionDavid TurellEvolution: ribosomes flexible, ancient (reply)By cut and past this study altered ribosomes radically and they still worked with the conclusion they were very flexible at the start of life:

"This experiment had a good chance of crashing. Instead, it delivered whopping evidence to corroborate the earliest evolution of the translational system, the mechanisms which make life out of our genes. The study swapped out all its magnesium, tabula rasa, and showed that the system, centering on the ribosome, would have thrived basically as it is today 4 billion years ago at the earliest foundations of life on Earth.

***

"In the system inside cells that translates genetic code into life, he replaced about 1,000 essential linchpins with primitive substitutes to see if the translational system would survive and function. It seemed impossible, yet it worked swimmingly, and Bray had compelling evidence that the great builder of proteins was active in the harsh conditions in which it evolved 4 billion years ago.

"The experiment's success reaffirmed the translational system's place at the earliest foundations of life on Earth.

"Every living thing exists because the translational system receives messages from DNA delivered to it by RNA and translates the messages into proteins. The system centers on a cellular machine called the ribosome, which is made of multiple large molecules of RNA and protein and is ubiquitous in life as we know it.

***

"In today's ribosome, and in the whole translational system, they are magnesium ions, and Bray's experiment replaced them all with iron ions and manganese ions, which were overabundant on primordial Earth. Williams and Jennifer Glass, the principal investigators in the new study, also had their doubts this was doable.

"I thought, 'It's not going to work, but we might as well try the moonshot'," said Williams who has led similar work before but on simpler molecules. "The fact that swapping out all the magnesium in the translational system actually worked was mind-boggling."

"That's because in living systems today, magnesium helps shape ribosomes by holding them together. Magnesium is also needed for some 20 additional enzymes of the translational system. It's one reason why dietary magnesium (Mg) is so important.

"The number of different things magnesium does in the ribosome and in the translational system is just enormous," said Williams. "There are so many types of catalytic activities in translation, and magnesium is involved in almost all of them."

***

"Bray incubated ribosomes in the presence of magnesium, iron, or manganese inside a special chamber with an artificial atmosphere devoid of oxygen, like the Earth four billion years ago.

"He found that the magnesium replacement went far beyond atoms in the ribosome.
"Surrounding the ribosome is also a huge cloud of magnesium atoms. It's called an atmosphere, or shell, and engulfs it completely. I replaced everything, including that, and the whole system still worked."

"Eons down the road, the evolution of the translational system in the presence of magnesium may have given it an adaptive advantage. As oxygen levels on Earth rose, binding up free manganese and iron, and making them less available to biology, magnesium probably comfortably assumed the thousands of roles it occupies in the translational system today.

Comment: This theoretical conclusion from this study supports the concept of initial design which was flexible enough to use what metals were available at different points in the Earth's evolution

DAVID: If other primates stayed in the trees and survive happily to this day, it is very difficult to see why a few dropped to the ground and they had to invent, or be helped by God, the complexities that are human beings. I obviously view the whole process totally differently than you.

dhw: We are theorizing. There must have been a beginning. It is perfectly possible that in one location, the primates could not stay in the trees, whereas in other locations they could. So you have one group of primates forced to develop a new way of life, while the rest carry on as before. Just as some land-dwelling organisms took up marine life, and some sea-dwelling organisms took up land life, always depending on local conditions. Why do you find this less logical than your God preparing one group of primates/land-dwelling/sea-dwelling organisms for life in conditions that don’t yet exist? (See "big brain birth canal" for more details.)

DAVID: As usual you are blithely ignoring the complex design changes in phenotype that are required, as the animal leaves land, and miraculously grows fins. Or drops out of the trees and is suddenly bipedal. Actually Lucy was both tree and ground capable, a true transition form, but even at that her differences from apes is enormous. the usual gap that requires design and a designer.

dhw: I am not blithely ignoring anything. You asked why some primates descended and others didn’t. I have offered you an explanation which you have completely ignored, preferring to confine the discussion to complex design changes. Nobody can explain the complex changes that lead to speciation, and so we theorize. The fact that we have found transitional forms is evidence for common descent.

Agreed

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https://agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=30191Sat, 27 Oct 2018 18:30:02 +0000EvolutionDavid TurellEvolution: more gaps in foraminifera (reply)DAVID: If other primates stayed in the trees and survive happily to this day, it is very difficult to see why a few dropped to the ground and they had to invent, or be helped by God, the complexities that are human beings. I obviously view the whole process totally differently than you.

dhw: We are theorizing. There must have been a beginning. It is perfectly possible that in one location, the primates could not stay in the trees, whereas in other locations they could. So you have one group of primates forced to develop a new way of life, while the rest carry on as before. Just as some land-dwelling organisms took up marine life, and some sea-dwelling organisms took up land life, always depending on local conditions. Why do you find this less logical than your God preparing one group of primates/land-dwelling/sea-dwelling organisms for life in conditions that don’t yet exist? (See "big brain birth canal" for more details.)

DAVID: As usual you are blithely ignoring the complex design changes in phenotype that are required, as the animal leaves land, and miraculously grows fins. Or drops out of the trees and is suddenly bipedal. Actually Lucy was both tree and ground capable, a true transition form, but even at that her differences from apes is enormous. the usual gap that requires design and a designer.

I am not blithely ignoring anything. You asked why some primates descended and others didn’t. I have offered you an explanation which you have completely ignored, preferring to confine the discussion to complex design changes. Nobody can explain the complex changes that lead to speciation, and so we theorize. The fact that we have found transitional forms is evidence for common descent.

DAVID: Subject not changed if the discussion is viewed in totality. Our brain is demonstrably beyond any need to drive its appearance. It is you who constantly revert to stresses and environmental changes as causing evolution, while I think it is planned. Environment plays a small role, if any to explain whales, bats, etc.

dhw: And etc. etc. etc. Nobody knows the causes of speciation, and that includes the causes that led to humans descending from tree-dwelling apes. But the idea that environmental change drove our ancestors to climb down from (possibly disappearing) trees, to adopt bipedalism and to exercise and thereby develop their brains in devising new ways to improve their chances of survival seems to me every bit as plausible as the idea that your God preprogrammed the process 3.8 billion years ago, or popped in to fiddle with their anatomy before they climbed down, and fiddled with their brains so that they could think up new strategies and, in due course, extend their thoughts to matters beyond their immediate needs.

DAVID: If other primates stayed in the trees and survive happily to this day, it is very difficult to see why a few dropped to the ground and they had to invent, or be helped by God, the complexities that are human beings. I obviously view the whole process totally differently than you.

dhw: We are theorizing. There must have been a beginning. It is perfectly possible that in one location, the primates could not stay in the trees, whereas in other locations they could. So you have one group of primates forced to develop a new way of life, while the rest carry on as before. Just as some land-dwelling organisms took up marine life, and some sea-dwelling organisms took up land life, always depending on local conditions. Why do you find this less logical than your God preparing one group of primates/land-dwelling/sea-dwelling organisms for life in conditions that don’t yet exist? (See "big brain birth canal" for more details.)

As usual you are blithely ignoring the complex design changes in phenotype that are required, as the animal leaves land, and miraculously grows fins. Or drops out of the trees and is suddenly bipedal. Actually Lucy was both tree and ground capable, a true transition form, but even at that her differences from apes is enormous. the usual gap that requires design and a designer.

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https://agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=30179Fri, 26 Oct 2018 14:24:00 +0000EvolutionDavid TurellEvolution: more gaps in foraminifera (reply)DAVID: Subject not changed if the discussion is viewed in totality. Our brain is demonstrably beyond any need to drive its appearance. It is you who constantly revert to stresses and environmental changes as causing evolution, while I think it is planned. Environment plays a small role, if any to explain whales, bats, etc.

dhw: And etc. etc. etc. Nobody knows the causes of speciation, and that includes the causes that led to humans descending from tree-dwelling apes. But the idea that environmental change drove our ancestors to climb down from (possibly disappearing) trees, to adopt bipedalism and to exercise and thereby develop their brains in devising new ways to improve their chances of survival seems to me every bit as plausible as the idea that your God preprogrammed the process 3.8 billion years ago, or popped in to fiddle with their anatomy before they climbed down, and fiddled with their brains so that they could think up new strategies and, in due course, extend their thoughts to matters beyond their immediate needs.

DAVID: If other primates stayed in the trees and survive happily to this day, it is very difficult to see why a few dropped to the ground and they had to invent, or be helped by God, the complexities that are human beings. I obviously view the whole process totally differently than you.

We are theorizing. There must have been a beginning. It is perfectly possible that in one location, the primates could not stay in the trees, whereas in other locations they could. So you have one group of primates forced to develop a new way of life, while the rest carry on as before. Just as some land-dwelling organisms took up marine life, and some sea-dwelling organisms took up land life, always depending on local conditions. Why do you find this less logical than your God preparing one group of primates/land-dwelling/sea-dwelling organisms for life in conditions that don’t yet exist? (See "big brain birth canal" for more details.)

dhw: Bacteria prove that multicellularity, the dog’s nose, the camel's hump, the weaverbird’s nest the monarch butterfly’s migration and the human brain are not necessary for life to survive. You also have your God specially designing bird sleep, dandelion seed, shrimp punching and insects hibernating. So why do you keep using the same old "not needed" and the same "by design" arguments to single out the human brain? They apply to every organ and organism of the multicellular world.

DAVID: And how did life jump from ever present bacteria to complex forms? Not by chance.

dhw: I asked why you keep trotting out the same old “not needed” and “by design” arguments to single out the human brain, when the same arguments apply to every other multicellular organism and natural wonder you can think of. You respond by changing the subject.

DAVID: Subject not changed if the discussion is viewed in totality. Our brain is demonstrably beyond any need to drive its appearance. It is you who constantly revert to stresses and environmental changes as causing evolution, while I think it is planned. Environment plays a small role, if any to explain whales, bats, etc.

dhw: And etc. etc. etc. Nobody knows the causes of speciation, and that includes the causes that led to humans descending from tree-dwelling apes. But the idea that environmental change drove our ancestors to climb down from (possibly disappearing) trees, to adopt bipedalism and to exercise and thereby develop their brains in devising new ways to improve their chances of survival seems to me every bit as plausible as the idea that your God preprogrammed the process 3.8 billion years ago, or popped in to fiddle with their anatomy before they climbed down, and fiddled with their brains so that they could think up new strategies and, in due course, extend their thoughts to matters beyond their immediate needs.

If other primates stayed in the trees and survive happily to this day, it is very difficult to see why a few dropped to the ground and they had to invent, or be helped by God, the complexities that are human beings. I obviously view the whole process totally differently than you.

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https://agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=30168Thu, 25 Oct 2018 17:46:38 +0000EvolutionDavid TurellEvolution: more gaps in foraminifera (reply)dhw: Bacteria prove that multicellularity, the dog’s nose, the camel's hump, the weaverbird’s nest the monarch butterfly’s migration and the human brain are not necessary for life to survive. You also have your God specially designing bird sleep, dandelion seed, shrimp punching and insects hibernating. So why do you keep using the same old "not needed" and the same "by design" arguments to single out the human brain? They apply to every organ and organism of the multicellular world.

DAVID: And how did life jump from ever present bacteria to complex forms? Not by chance.

dhw: I asked why you keep trotting out the same old “not needed” and “by design” arguments to single out the human brain, when the same arguments apply to every other multicellular organism and natural wonder you can think of. You respond by changing the subject.

DAVID: Subject not changed if the discussion is viewed in totality. Our brain is demonstrably beyond any need to drive its appearance. It is you who constantly revert to stresses and environmental changes as causing evolution, while I think it is planned. Environment plays a small role, if any to explain whales, bats, etc.

And etc. etc. etc. Nobody knows the causes of speciation, and that includes the causes that led to humans descending from tree-dwelling apes. But the idea that environmental change drove our ancestors to climb down from (possibly disappearing) trees, to adopt bipedalism and to exercise and thereby develop their brains in devising new ways to improve their chances of survival seems to me every bit as plausible as the idea that your God preprogrammed the process 3.8 billion years ago, or popped in to fiddle with their anatomy before they climbed down, and fiddled with their brains so that they could think up new strategies and, in due course, extend their thoughts to matters beyond their immediate needs.

DAVID: It is best to abandon Darwin's theory of evolution, because staying with his presumptions slows real research.

dhw: It is best not to abandon a whole theory because you disagree with a part of that theory. I agree that it is best to abandon Darwin’s theory that evolution only proceeds gradually and nature does not make jumps. Even his "bulldog" Huxley disagreed with him, so what's new?

DAVID: All that is left of Darwin is some form of common descent, and Tony disagrees with that.

dhw: And you disagree with Tony, because you also believe in common descent. The dispute concerns how evolution works. You believe in a divine 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme plus dabbling; Darwin believed in random mutations and gradualism; Huxley rejected gradualism and Gould proposed punctuated equilibrium; I hypothesize cellular intelligence. None of us have abandoned the bedrock of Darwin’s theory, which is common descent.

All your reply does is agree with me. And you won't abandon Darwin as s patron saint for you. What Darwin failed to do is based on what he did not know. The concept of common descent was present before Darwin's work. The concept of evolution from simple to complex was made more popular by his book, although his method of advancing evolution is demonstrably wrong.